13 thoughts on “Calculators on!

  • 8/26/2005 at 10:05 am
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    Well what if you have no calculations to make, huh? Wouldn’t that stop you?

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  • 8/26/2005 at 11:42 am
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    HP > TI

    Long live Reverse Polish!

    Good lord, I’ve now had mine for 10 years now…

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  • 8/26/2005 at 11:58 am
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    HP has a pretty loyal following. But really? The HP is nothing in comparison to TI. It’s just not. I wonder if there’s ever been a “calculator off” that put users against each other to see who could make a series of calculations faster.

    That would be very interesting.

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  • 8/26/2005 at 12:02 pm
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    The HP-48G is a venerable, unstoppable calculator. The damn thing will do anything, it makes the lowly TI-82’s that my classmates used cry when he it shows up. Reverse polish notation has a bit of a learning curve, but definately speeds up your calculations.

    If calculators were cars, the TI-82 would be the Honda Civic… built for reliability, no frills, not much going on, the HP-48G would be the Ferrari Enzo… pure performance machine.

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  • 8/26/2005 at 1:19 pm
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    Oooooh, but I have HP-48GX! (the only difference being it can handle memory cards and stuff, none of which I have).

    The Reverse Polish is always fun when a classmate (or roommate) needs to borrow your calculator…

    “Hey, can I borrow your calculator for a sec?”

    “Um, you’re not going to figure it out…”

    “Oh, c’mon.”

    “Fine. Here you go.”

    [beep]

    “Wtf?! This calculator is dumb.”

    I am quite fond of the built-in minesweeper game. It’s a little different than the windows version.

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  • 8/26/2005 at 3:30 pm
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    No sense in using the TI-82 with the TI-83 available. Regardless, I am faithful to my TI-86, the best combination of power and simplicity!

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  • 8/26/2005 at 3:33 pm
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    Ted’s right on. It’s all about having an appropriate amount of power and useability. HP’s may have crazy minesweeper games and enough RAM to run World of Warcraft… but my TI-82 is as simple as it gets. And still capable of great problem solving.

    I am a huge fan of Windows minesweeper though. HUGE fan. so I’d be interested in hearing about the differences between HP and Windows.

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  • 8/26/2005 at 4:52 pm
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    As a matter of fact, we used to race our calculators back in high school, i believe the standard way to test was to run factorials, since they tended to take the longest so there would be a clear winner. I can’t remember which factorial we used to run though, something like 42? They took up to a minute each to run, if i remember the TI won by a long shot.

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  • 8/26/2005 at 5:31 pm
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    I almost cried the day my TI-89 dissapeared from the campus center. I went for some food, came back, and she was missing.

    I remember fondly the days we shared in high school, the nerve-racking day we took the AP Calc test together, and the celebration we shared when I got a 5 on the test.

    The useless programs were wonderful too. I wrote one that would calculate the next prime number from any starting number you input.

    I couldnt bring myself to replace my TI-89, taken before it’s time. I just leave an empty spot on my desk, hoping it will return one day.

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  • 8/26/2005 at 8:34 pm
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    TI-voyage 200 owns.

    (its basically a TI-92plus, which is basically a TI-92, which the TI-89 basically is, basically.)

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  • 8/27/2005 at 11:29 pm
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    greetings from oregon!

    The HP minesweeper puts you in the top-left corner of the screen, and you have to get to the bottom-right corner of the screen without getting blown up. It’s definitely a different perspective. Sometimes I’ll mix it up a bit by only allowing myself to go either down or over.

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  • 8/29/2005 at 8:05 am
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    The HP minesweeper got me through many a horrible math class. I dig HP because once you get through the RPN learning curve and learn to use the stack correctly, you can fly through calculations faster than I could with a standard TI. Plus the 48 had all the advanced features (3-d wireframe plots!)

    But, as far as speed goes, TI’s convert to reverse polish internally so I think skipping the parsing step would lead to faster calculations.

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